Speaker
Prof.
Dennis Whyte
(MIT Plasma Science Fusion Center)
Description
The recent industrial maturation of high-temperature, high-field superconductors opens up a faster and cheaper development path for fusion energy by enabling reactor-level performance at smaller scale. The current fusion energy development path, based on large volume moderate magnetic B field devices is proving to be slow and expensive. A development effort is underway on new superconductor magnet technology development, and accompanying plasma physics research at high-B, that will open up a viable and attractive path for fusion energy development. This path would feature smaller volume, fusion capable devices that could be built more quickly than low-to-moderate field designs based on conventional superconductors. Fusion’s worldwide development could be accelerated by using several small, flexible devices rather than relying solely on a single, very large device. These would be used to obtain the acknowledged science and technology knowledge necessary for fusion energy beyond achievement of high fusion plasma gain. Such a scenario would also permit the testing of multiple confinement configurations while distributing technical and scientific risk among smaller devices. Higher field and small size also allows operation away from well-known operational limits for plasma pressure, density and current. The advantages of this path have been long recognized – earlier U.S. plans for burning plasma experiments [Compact Ignition Tokamak (CIT), Burning Plasma Experiment (BPX), Fusion Ignition Research Experiment (FIRE)] featured compact high-field designs, but these were necessarily pulsed due to the use of copper coils. Underpinning this new approach is the recent industrial maturity of high-temperature, high-field superconductor tapes that would offer a truly “game changing” opportunity for magnetic fusion when developed into large-scale coils. The superconductor tape form and higher operating temperatures also open up the possibility of demountable superconducting magnets in a fusion system, providing a modularity that vastly improves simplicity in the construction, maintenance, and upgrade of the coils and the internal nuclear engineering components required for fusion’s development.
| Country or International Organization | USA |
|---|---|
| Paper Number | FIP/P7-6 |
Primary author
Prof.
Dennis Whyte
(MIT Plasma Science Fusion Center)
Co-authors
Mr
Brandon Sorbom
(MIT)
Dr
Brian LaBombard
(MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center)
Dr
Earl Marmar
(Mass. Inst. of Technology)
Dr
Joseph Minervini
(MIT)
Dr
Leslie Bromberg
(MIT)
Martin Greenwald
(MIT)
